


The Hammer or the Anvil

by leslielol



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Episode Related, Established Relationship, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2019-02-22 18:45:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13172949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leslielol/pseuds/leslielol
Summary: Before Stamets chooses whether to suffer or triumph, he digs into the details with Burnham. Things veer off from there.Post-1x07.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from a line by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: "Suffer or triumph, be the hammer or the anvil." (He needs to chill a bit in that whole poem but whatever)

Lieutenant Stamets hadn't been there before. He was certain. 

Or, for as sure as he could be about his existence in one particular dimension or another, he was. 

The music was different, the crowds not aligned as he’d become completely accustomed, and rowdier besides. Someone grabbed his arm as he passed--an accident, he thought, except for the drunken shouts that followed.

_“Come dance with us, Lieutenant!”_

_“No,”_ was his swift reply, thrown sidelong at whoever was closest. He heard laughter, like there was some great joke to be had, and only Stamets himself could deliver the punchline. 

The lights pulsed and swayed with the music, and Stamets felt his shoulders pinch as he tried to get out from under it. Physics and good sense told him he couldn’t, but Stamets was learning more about what physics could and couldn’t allow, and _good sense_ was long a thing of the past.

Stamets bumped knee-first into a table, and took from it what was necessary to mollify the sharp pain, and dull his glaring thoughts. 

Pathways laid throughout the universe like footpaths. He’d only travelled a handful, but from the corner of his mind’s eye, had seen the others as they dipped and ducked out of reality before joining the hordes. An organic, rooted system tucked into an apparent inhospitable atmosphere, and yet somehow they flourished. 

It was beautiful--that much was undeniable.

But its beauty belied its danger, and its potential. 

Stamets now had a better understanding of both. 

He got what he came for, kept his head down, and under a wash of light and sound, returned on the path that had brought him here. 

-

The party was cancelled--understandably so. 

Instead, a ship-wide search was initiated for the means by which a stowaway might enter and integrate with the ship’s complement. Those who had already partook in the favors of a night off quickly sobered up and set about the unnerving task of taking apart their vessel and unearthing every way in which it could be compromised. 

They were told only that it had been, and it was nearly two days’ time before the gossip leaked from the conspirators on the bridge, and made its way among the masses. 

They learned of the heroics of Michael Burnham and Ash Tyler, as well as the multiple instances of the total and utter destruction of their ship, and unremitting loss of their lives. 

After reconciling so many near-misses with Mudd--all fifty-seven of them--an air of unease and unrelenting alert might have been normal, even expected. Starfleet had already suffered such losses that still more--whether in the past, or undone by an attempted future--should still weigh heavy on the consciences of its own survivors. 

Instead, revellers were convinced they had just that much more to celebrate. 

Or, at least the DJ thought so, in cueing up a start to the festivities with a rousing, _Time After Time._

Michael Burnham had had her fill of parties. Ash Tyler both delighted and confused her, so she was relieved when he mentioned to her--itself a kind of unprompted apology--that Captain Lorca wanted him for a training session, and he would not be available until late in the evening, should she desire another dance. 

Swallowing her words, Burnham did not answer his question, laid flat as it was. She stepped to one side of it and wished him well in his training, and before she could question her own intentions, Burnham made mention of an assignment from Lieutenant Stamets that would likewise remove her from the festivities. 

To her horror, Ash seemed genuinely sorry to hear it. 

“You’ve made a convert of me,” he’d said, smiling. “It’s not a party without Michael Burnham.”

She’d felt her face grow hot at what was, ostensibly, a compliment not towards her intellect or capabilities, but to her personality. A personality she did not put in the time and effort to develop towards any particular worth, but what was, instead, a thing tailored to her life experiences. A thing all her own. 

She decided to consider the ramifications of that, later. 

In the meantime, Burnham set out to find Lieutenant Stamets, hoping that he would not make a liar out of her, and in fact _would_ provide her with an excuse--an _assignment,_ rather. 

At the very least, she could do with the distraction. 

She checked Engineering, various adjoining labs, and even carefully paced through the forest built to house and cultivate Stamets’ mushrooms. She knew from the earthy smell he carried around with him that he was communing with his cousins more and more. 

That wasn’t the only clue, but out of respect for the Lieutenant, she did dwell on the fact that his dreamy, uneasy state was often cleared after he sat for a spell amongst those lifeforms. Burnham was not certain yet that Stamets knew he was drawn to them after particularly long jumps. He behaved otherwise, since his duties took him there anyway, he wasn’t prioritizing them over the drive itself, its software and hardware components. 

Nevermind that Cadet Tilly had become something of an expert in those fields, filling the space left by Stamets’ wandering absence. 

Unable to discover Stamets in any of his usual haunts, Burnham’s curiosity got the better of her, and she asked the ship’s internal computer systems to determine his location. 

The bright, modulated voice replied, _[Lieutenant Stamets is in his quarters.]_

She quickly realized her intrusion; it sat in her stomach, an unearthed groan. It was only then that she checked the time, and saw the hour to be creeping towards late, or late enough. Suddenly, every facet of her search was a blatant and clear explanation, and Burnham knew she should have stopped at Engineering. If Lieutenant Stamets wasn’t there, his location wasn’t for her to know.

She was two steps from exiting Engineering when she was paged, the computer’s clear tones causing her to both stop, listen, and obey. 

_[Science Specialist Burnham, report to Deck 5, Unit L0014.]_

Shame found her again. It pressed at her back, elongating itself up the length of her spine until it settled in her neck and spread open across her shoulders. She felt it all the way down to her fingertips, which had laid flat to touch the sides of her legs. 

Burnham took a breath, then swallowed it down. 

“Understood,” she said, the word slipping out on the back of a barely-contained sigh. 

The Lieutenant’s quarters were not at all far from Engineering, a fact Burnham felt she should have anticipated. It wouldn’t do to walk in circles around the order, hoping Stamets would forget making it. She arrived at the unit, and read the two names printed neatly in the nine recognized languages particular to Discovery’s crew, including Vulcan, binary, and Earth Common English. Only those languages only audible in nature, or telepathic, were excluded. 

_Dr. H. Culber_  
_Lt. P. Stamets_

Her knuckle barely grazed the door before it drew open, sliding resoundingly left to reveal a tired-eyed, frowning Lt. Stamets. It was only from his hairline down that the man came undone; his uniform was unzipped at the throat, revealing a t-shirt rather than a column of pale skin. He stood unbalanced, and before jumping to conclusions about his physical state, Burnham glanced downward to find her answer. One of the Lieutenants boots was gone, with the other unzipped and lilting sadly open. 

“Yes?” he said, his voice rich with accusation.

Burnham blinked and shot back, “You called _me_ here.”

“You called me first,” Stamets countered, and then answered Burnham’s private fear that her request had mistakenly been beamed clear across the ship: “I make a point of knowing who’s looking for me.” 

He didn’t stipulate to the fact that, back when Discovery was first commandeered by Captain Lorca, who shifted its focus solely to the war effort, Stamets had a penchant for finding himself in Med Bay, working as he pleased on a PADD while enjoying Dr. Culber’s company. He claimed Hugh’s humming had a beneficial effect on his subject matter--in particular, that a means of escape drove his thoughts to some interesting places. 

Straal, Stamets’ friend and colleague of twelve years, and a friend of Hugh’s for almost half that time, knew that much to be true. 

People who didn’t know him thought he was perpetually ill before they knew him for lovesick.

 _People_ save for Lorca, who derided him as idle, and never one to be where he ought to when Lorca was looking.

A one-time shouting match should have been the stuff of legend--or gossip, at the very least--but by the good grace of its observers, had never made the rounds. Stemets hesitated to think it was respect for him--even from among his team--but rather empathy. There was some shared concern in those early days when Discovery was less an exploratory vessel and more a warship on the frontlines. 

Words were exchanged. Stamets wasn’t proud to think of how easily he was drawn into the fray by his own Captain. 

_“I shouldn’t_ have _to look for my Chief Engineer.”_

_“Would you prefer us all chained to our stations, Captain?”_

_“Not everyone. Just you, as it happens. The only one here who seems to think a **war** shouldn’t challenge his delicate sensibilities.”_

_“I don’t think a war needs two dictatorships to carry itself out, **Captain.”**_

He wasn’t proud, either, by how little their interactions had changed in nearly nine months.

The addition of Michael Burnham had changed things for him in that respect, and Stamets would be a fool to think otherwise. She held a particular interest in their Captain’s damaged eyes, having emerged onto the public stage with one foot firmly planted in a warzone. She didn’t have to be dragged there like Stamets. 

Looking at her now--in uniform, despite being stripped of her acclaimed First Officer status--Stamets realized the only place she’d gone unwillingly was here, to his private quarters. 

He said needlessly, “You’re not at the party.” 

“No.” 

Burnham and Stamets both heard the slight slur to his words, and while Burnham considered it, she kept those thoughts to herself. 

She added, “The one was adequate. Though, I think perhaps my distaste for them is warranted.” 

“If it’s not bad music it’s a time-travelling maniac,” Stamets supposed, smiling weakly. 

“Is this show of humility for my benefit,” Burnham started, and searched Stamets’ soft expression for something definitive, “Or do you feel the same?”

Stamets looked pointedly at the illuminated novelty glass in his hand, a thing that seemed to hum in soft pinks and yellows, and raised it besides. 

“You think this is a part of the decour? My furnishing ideals?” Still frowning, he raised the glass to his lips and muttered before drinking, “I made an appearance.” 

The look on Burnham’s face must have relayed her thoughts: that he’d only attended long enough for one drink and a hasty refill. She raised an eyebrow in that way that--all those months ago--had Stamets thinking she was more Vulcan than appearances allowed.

“Oh, no. No, no, no. I love a good party.” Stamets went on to explain himself with a sideways smile. “Music, alcohol, interesting company. An entire deck filled with drunken cadets doesn’t quite paint that picture.” 

“I disagree. I observed some very interesting behavior--” 

“Good-interesting,” Stamets specified, wrinkling his nose as if the distinction was clear. “Pleasant. On earth, Hugh got us invited to some great ones. Starfleet wrangled up the diplomats and admirals, but Hugh found these… museum openings, artists unveiling their new collections, authors and poets and…” He trailed off, those thoughts leaving him with an untenable fondness. 

Burnham cocked her head. With the advent of a new angle, she seemed to see a great deal more. 

“You miss earth.” 

Stamets shrugged. “Not particularly. Not in and of itself.” 

He’d had that fear, once, before his mushrooms started to grow and his forest aboard the Discovery was a thing of genuine accomplishment and beauty. Now his boots sank just-so into the wet earth, and it smelled enough like home that it didn’t matter Stamets had to go to the nearest observation deck--rather than simply lift his head--to see the stars. 

He added wryly, “And it’s not as though the galaxy is wanting for poets.” 

Burnham searched instead for a workaround. 

“Dr. Culber is aboard,” she reasoned. “You see him everyday.”

“Trying to figure me out, Burnham?” 

“Yes. As you have, in the past, attempted to figure _me_ out.” she looked him over, again taking in the tidy hair, askew uniform, and uneven footwear. “I need to see what I am working with.” 

Stamets regarded her with more intense focus than perhaps a man in his state should be capable, though Burnham found no problem in standing up to his scrutiny. She’d stood before the Vulcan High Council as a young human woman, before Starfleet Command as a mutineer. She’d stood against Klingons, and hoped to do so again. 

Lieutenant Stamets was his own breed of daunting, but she’d already told him her deepest secret, and hadn’t yet heard it parroted back to her in some form by another’s word. He was as trusted a source for knowledge as a keeper of it. What, then, did she have to fear?

Stamets moved to one side of the doorway. 

“Come in.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started this fic a while ago and wanted to finish it before the show came back. Here's hoping posting the first bit will light a fire under my ass to do just that.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More! Because setting realistic writing goals is, like, way cool.

The space was larger than the quarters Burnham shared with Tilly, and neater for the same reason. 

Still, it wasn’t so grand that Stamets should look weary for all ten steps it took to reach the couch and accompanying armchair poised around a small table. There were PADDs and assorted research, a few small samples of plant life, that had the look of a long-standing mess. When Burnham glanced around the rooms and wondered what here belonged to Dr. Culber, her gaze inevitably settled on Stamets. 

His posture and appearance were a far cry from his straight-backed best. Instead, he was as slumped and beaten as the lowliest cadet, rather than the well-decorated officer he’d become.

He nursed his drink for a time, perhaps not capable of feeling rushed for its effects, or--and this was likelier by far--he had committed himself to making the best decisions amidst all his poorer ones, and he meant to devote to that task all his remaining mental capacities. He fidgeted and sighed, all the while grappling with what he could tell her, but deciding, ultimately, that he had enough secrets. 

Burnham was curious; he had in her a ready audience. 

And practically, it was hardly the mutineer’s responsibility to disclose what he’d done, much less one who wished her existence would not upset the crew as it had, once, upset the entire galaxy. Opening his heart to Michael Burnham was likely the safest thing Stamets would do in some time. 

“We were happy on earth,” he said, pausing before he was able to pinpoint exactly why that was. He said that much to the drink in his hands: “I didn’t have to lie to him, there.”

“This concerns the spore drive.” Mindful of his inebriated state, Burnham decided to follow this rabbit very closely, jump for jump. 

“The effects of its use are still unknown,” she said, but the look of unease unfolding over Stamets’ brow told her otherwise. “Except, I must conclude, to you. And they are not good.”

Stamets shook his head; he couldn’t qualify what was happening to him in such terms. 

It was only that he _didn’t know,_ and that was finally beginning to frighten him. 

“And yet, except for measureable fatigue, heightened heart rate and the jumps doing a number on my stomach ulcer, I’m in--apparent--good health.” He took in another mouthful of his drink--a gesture that should have read as celebratory, save for the statement’s open-ended nature. 

Drink resting against his cheek, a frown pursing his lips, he said, “And I should know, I’ve been more intimate with Hugh’s tricorder than him for the past six weeks.” He shut his mouth, then, and managed to look contrite. 

“That was inappropriate,” he said, and it carried the tone of a coming apology. 

Burnham shook her head; it was merely information, it didn't carry value outside being fact or fiction. 

She said as much, adding, “Though, I believe it is customary to offer my condolences.”

A laugh sputtered from Stamets’ mouth, though it started in his lower faculties and surged forward, barrelling through his chest and windpipe. The outburst left his sides aching and Burnham watching him warily. 

The laugh tapered off and Stamets, perhaps sobered by the eruption, took a moment to smooth a hand over his hair, and zip the one boot he was still wearing. As if the laughter had disrupted both and these small fixes were the extent to which he could compose himself. 

“One day, I'll tell Hugh you said that.”

“There is no time like the present,” Burnham offered, another human colloquialism that had penetrated her youth, and now stood as proof that Amanda Grayson’s efforts were not in vain. 

Stamets rolled his eyes, said, “Oh, I beg to differ,” and partook again from his phosphorescent party cup.

“Things have changed,” he said, a solid excuse for some months now, but no less true even for its convenience. “There’s a war. Apparently we’re _soldiers_ now.” 

In his weariness--and the means he summoned from within himself to combat it--Burnham was reminded of Captain Georgiou, in those awful moments in her study, after some inevitable loss, the likes of which chased at the heels of every great commander. Burnham wasn’t transported back to such a time, and by no means had seen the likeness of her Captain in anyone since her death, but she saw shades of dissatisfaction in Stamets, the same self-loathing that would catch Georgiou unawares until she battled it off. 

Burnham longed to be there again, fighting alongside her. 

And though he was of an excellent mind and a kinder soul than she’d expected, Stamets made for a poor substitute. 

Burnham was embarrassed to note that it was less that she wanted to help than she longed for a time when help was asked that of her, and the likes of none other than her dearest friend and mentor believed it forthcoming, let alone _possible._

Stamets, Burnham realized, did not believe help was a natural occurrence. Worse, he seemed not to expect it should stray from its path--drawn as it was like willful streams towards the good and righteous--to reach him in any capacity, by chance or the deviations of others.

With this realization, Burnham found herself wanting to parrot the man’s own words back at him.

A pitiable--if well-meaning-- _I’m sorry._

“I’m not unwell, just different.” 

He did not sound entirely convinced of that fact, himself, but neither he nor Burnham made the obvious point that either option should preclude the other. 

Razing the back of his head with his hand, Stamets reasoned airily, “Feeling… temporal… is hardly cause for alarm. That’s humanity, in a nutshell.”

“You’re not entirely human anymore,” Burnham countered, causing Stamets to regard her with a flat look.

“...And to that point, perhaps potentially knowing things from a divergent or future timeline isn’t so strange. It could be the Tardigrade version of the Levodian flu.”

This needless commentary, Burnham thought, was Stamets’ misplaced attempt to lighten the mood. Misplaced, because nothing about Burnham--not her disposition nor her behavior--suggested she required the kind of handling Stamets was trying for. Burnham saw shades of Amanda Grayson in him as he played peacemaker in a situation without any battlefronts, and kept matters lifted tenuously in the air, as if bouncing them gamely about was a long-term solution, and they wouldn’t come crashing-- _hurtling_ \--down, eventually. 

Burnham gave him nothing like he wanted--no weak, hapless smile from the curve of which he could disengage. Instead, she inched forward, showing both her interest in and appreciation for the conspiratorial nature of this conversation.

“Is that what you think this information is?”

 _Incredible,_ she thought. _Terrifying._

“You don't seem surprised,” Stamets muttered, and perhaps he was a touch disappointed that his great, terrible, and mild-altering secret was not being received as such. “Tilly?”

“She swore me to secrecy,” Burnham said, then clarified, _“She_ did that. I made no such agreement.”

Stamets only nodded--a vague effort hardly carried out to completion. He seemed melancholy, which was not a state Burnham would fast attribute to the Lieutenant. She knew him first in broad strokes of incredible genius and frustrated program leader. The curious matter of his empathy and understanding came later, in bursts and fits, as if he felt those impulses should be tempered. 

Here and now, Burnham saw herself as witness to another side of the man: the shunted heap whose genius had driven him into a corner. His own curiosity had damned him, and somewhere there was fault to assign, but Stamets swept up and claimed all that for his own, too. 

“I don’t know what it is,” he said, a slow and unfamiliar admission. “Maybe, in existing outside the normal time stream, I’ve stepped into and out of other streams. Or maybe I’m not the constant I think I am, and it’s less about knowing certain things, but _being_ certain places. Maybe they exist within me, or maybe I’m being strung out between an endless collection of realities.”

Stamets stared blankly ahead, his gaze meeting--but somehow not--Burnham’s head-on. She felt a sudden, unnatural chill at the prospect of being seen but not registered. 

It reminded her of being a prisoner again, of a jumpsuit and ion braces on her wrists that were both designed to limit her movement in the world. 

Stamets continued, never one to slow down even if the attention of his audience was waning, “Maybe the spore drive is just frying my brain, and everything I think I know is the result of rewired nerve receptors, or a tumor, or the Tardigrade DNA zombifying my own. Maybe I’ll grow an exoskeleton. Maybe I’ll lose all ability to speak and hear and understand anything but my mushrooms. That’d be-- _poetic,_ at least.”

He shrugged as if to say, _the reasoning mattered less the the outcome._ But that was all smoke and mirrors, a quick means to distract and deter. Burnham kept her eye on Stamets’ original sin. 

“And, despite all of these unknowns, it is Dr. Culber’s state of mind that gives you pause.” 

Stamets let his head dip slightly, a quiet display for reasons well outside his not speaking. 

He was a giant in the various scientific communities he ran in, or ran through; no one would ever mistake him for subtle. But the subject of his partner turned his thoughts inward, and warmed them over, until there was nothing about Stamets that wasn’t soft and aglow. 

“He’ll be off his shift soon,” Stamets said, and at once, Burnham knew she was not the intended target of this information. With the grim determination of a man who knew his options were limited, but that action was necessary, Stamets was reminding himself of his own intentions. 

“I have a lovely Ktarian Merlot and the disgusting Saurian Brandy he claims to favor. We will have our own party.” 

Burnham raised an eyebrow. “And you will tell him of these detrimental effects?”

“What? _No._ ” Stamets’ tone carried on as if he meant to question whether or not the Vulcan educational system had failed Burnham when it came to simple intuition. 

“We’ll drink and I’ll flirt and he’ll laugh at me. It’ll be like old times.” 

Burnham reared back in her seat, and couldn’t be certain Stamets hadn’t said that just to confound her further. 

“You want him to laugh at you.” 

“...I want him to smile.”

Stamets grimaced in the comment’s aftermath. He had not wanted to appear pitiable, yet he’d marched himself to that signpost, stopped, erected floodlights, and stood beneath its heavy lettering. 

Worse, Burnham read into it what the statement laid out. She asked, “Are you telling me all this because you seek my advice?” 

She phrased her question carefully, impartiality plucking each word like a choice berry from a fragrant bush, but Stamets parsed her meaning. 

_Do you need a saner mind than your own to tell you you’re going nowhere with this?_

Smarting, Stamets shot out a biting reply, trying for nasty but landing somewhere short. He spoke with every intention of riding some blazing comet of a smart remark, only to find himself burning up in the far reaches of its tail. 

“I’m telling you this because you told me you’d never been in love, and that was some heavy shit, so I thought you’d feel better knowing something stupidly devastating of me. Clearly, I was mistaken.”

“No,” Burnham responded, resoundingly sure but curious as to why she felt that way. “This helps. Continue.” 

The sting went out of Stamets’ imagined wounds. Burnham’s sentiment did not meet the heights of her lofty logical standards, but was nothing if not endearing. And truth be told, Stamets delighted in this show of Burnham’s humanity. She seemed uneasy with its handling, because empathy and heartache and intrigue towards those things in others was--for so long--kept pressed and secure inside her, well out of reach. She’d never developed a need for it. 

He wondered if there was still more to see and, as was his wont, Stamets wore his best smirk and flayed himself open. 

He made a pretty piece of bait. 

“Hugh’s doomed to love me. His words.” 

The smirk faded, and was replaced instead with a tight-lipped and grim little frown. 

Once again, Stamets had miscalculated. Bearing so much of himself in an effort to get answers and satisfy his curiosity only ever seemed to hurt him. If it wasn’t a set of three-inch steel needles piercing his sides, it was recognizing the endless stream of difficulties he hoisted on others who only wanted to do the good work of loving him. 

Burnham, whose upbringing taught her to study and recognize emotions rather than commune with them, suddenly found it difficult to do either. 

She saw raw, red, open heartbreak, and wanted none of that for herself.

“I don’t have the heart--or the backbone--to tell him he’s got it exactly right.” 

Either for the drink or his heavy conscience, Stamets gave only a mumbled revival of his situation, and in doing so glossed over the effects travelling the mycelial network had on him in favor of those that strayed him even further from his partner’s side. Burnham listened as Stamets detailed his betrayal: so long as scans and readings appeared mostly normal--and to that point, Stamets believed it was only a matter of time before the mental effects laid a physical presence--there was cover. _Hugh_ had cover, for as long as Stamets kept mum on his own spiraling condition.

“He knows something’s wrong. He doesn’t want to believe I’m lying about it. I’m not a good liar. And I’ve never lied before, not to him.” 

“Honesty,” Burnham recalled of Stamets’ story of his and Dr. Culber’s coupling. “It’s what you like about each other.”

It had intrigued her then, but resonated with her, now, as she came to witness just how far Stamets had come from those--even as he told it--fairytale beginnings. She wished he could know that there were ups and downs to every story, that he could fall for a very long time before tumbling into a new existence. 

Hers had been peculiar--stripped of her rank, imprisoned, then appropriated into the very war she’d begun--but there were always odds, incalculably small as they were, that Stamets might come away clean, that his warped faculties would recover and his life could be good.

And while neither had done the requisite calculations, Stamets did not imagine his odds so favorably, and only part of that was the war. 

The rest, he chalked up to a debt owed. The universe, he’d come to learn, was particular about those kinds of things. 

A tight pain dug in at the corners of his eyes as he answered Burnham’s charge that he’d once held himself and Culber as the pinnacle of loving and committed relationships. 

“Right again,” he said, and tried to ignore the way his voice cut itself atop every consonant, and drowned under every vowel. 

Burnham didn’t.

“May I speak freely?”

Stamets rallied his senses and said snippily, “Have you been holding back?”

Burnham met him with a soft look, but scarcely the words to match. 

“You are arrogant. Not unduly so, but arrogant nonetheless. You hold your choices above others’ even before you’ve made them. It stands to reason you would anoint yourself as Dr. Culber’s protector. It is a _high and mighty_ position to have, and you feel you are doing what is right by the very virtue of doing _something._ ”

Stamets lurched forward with such intent that Burnham feared he’d come clear off his seat. But it was just the scientist in him, eager to be arguing one way or another of reading life’s most unexpected results.

“See, but I _don’t._ ” The ferocity stopped there, and Stamets returned to that quiet place inside himself he hoped was never exposed in his travels on the mycelial network. He always thought--feared--if the universe knew there was such a deep, sacred space, it would fill it to the brim. 

“I know I’m doing it wrong. He--Hugh’s always taken care of me, of us. In every way that counts. I know by even _attempting,_ I’m failing, but there is no other way.” Then he smiled, and unlike any precursor to the unexpected bursts of hysterical laughter he’d been prone to in recent weeks, this smile stayed in its neat confines. “I’m more out of my depth here than I am navigating a starship along an unseen spore network. In space. With my mind.”

Burnham mirrored the expression, and on her own face found it tired and lacking. “That is, at least, a high bar.”

“Thanks.” 

At least he sounded sincere. 

“You love Dr. Culber,” Burnham said, and as Stamets began to wonder if she posed that as a inquiry, she continued, “And that affords him a mutual sense of trust, respect, and care.”

Stamets felt his throat run dry, and it didn’t feel fair given how much he’d had to drink.

Try as Burnham might to plait her thoughts in neat, logical streams, _that_ certainly hung loose like a question. It was due to her unhurried way of speaking, perhaps, afforded to her because she needn't harbor the added concerns humanity imbued to their languages. 

“Yes,” Stamets croaked. “But each complicates the other. If I care for him enough, maybe I don’t intrust him with this information. Maybe I spare him the responsibility.”

Perhaps an idler mind would let him pass with that much, and even go with thinking Stamets a sweetheart for the depth of his consideration. Michael Burnham was of no idle mind, and by the searching expression on her face, Stamets knew he’d been made as a coward or worse.

“I have a question--”

Stamets pinched his eyes shut, as if that would keep him from hearing anything Burnham had plans to say. 

“Please, God, may it be theoretical.”

“Why should your concern for his career trump his concern for your life?” 

“It shouldn’t.” Stamets felt what should have been shame churning about his gut, but the alcohol did its best to cut through the worst of it, leaving him only in the mild discomfort known to the perpetual liar. He shifted in his seat, but comfort evaded him at every opportunity. “But at this point, salvaging his future is more likely than living mine.”

 _That look_ assumed itself Burnham’s face, the one where she was dead-set on saving a life by any means, including sacrificing her own to do so. Those were her evergreen approaches to any problem, her first, best options. That much of her fabled reputation seemed to have borne itself out ad nauseam. 

“Lieutenant--”

“That wasn’t--a cry for help. Or anything as pointless.” The impulse to wave his arms and physically impede her words was strong, and Stamets lost some of the sloshing contents of his drink to the cause. 

“I did this to myself,” he asserted, again, as though the reasoning was sound. “Hugh… he is more important. He is better. Every variation arrives at that conclusion. Maybe it’s sentimental, but--”

“Yes,” Burnham interrupted. “It is.” 

The air in the room changed--it first sparked, then sputtered, as if only this space was being depressurized. Intellectually, both knew this was not the case, but the facts as they were did little to abate the shortness in Burnham’s breath, the sting in Stamets’ lungs. 

“When you’re in love, you’ll understand.”

The more he heard himself speaking, searching for certitude, the more lost he became with every subsequent verbal twist and turn. 

“You’ll do things that will damage yourself in the eyes of the only person you care to have see you. You’ll never forgive yourself for any of it. But if you’re lucky… when you go right up to the edge and pray they don’t know how little left there is to go before the fall, and still you do it-- _every time_ \--because they deserve every inch… ” he stopped, briefly, to see an end, to witness its light. “If you’re lucky, they’ll be right there with you. Veering over that same edge.”

It was shame--not confusion--that speared Burnham’s heart, freeing it from her ribcage, only to trap it--squirming--against her spine.

“I… understand.”

Perhaps she said this much only to herself, or so quietly that Stamets could not hear her, because he was none too keen a witness to her realization. That she had felt that way every moment she stood in the presence of Phillipa Georgiou, and that those intense and abiding feelings of admiration and regret were an expression of unsung love was news to her. 

It was at once a realization she did not want to be alone with, nor one she could not bear to confront before any living being. She pulled it back into the stark white recesses of her heart--previously unfilled, unmarked, unwanted. 

She calmed her mind and did as she had learned: assume her place and discern the world. 

“But I don't want him to.” 

Stamets’ small redaction captured Burnham’s attention. He’d spoken so quietly, it was as if the words themselves were small and delicate, and should be treated as such. 

“What do you _mean?”_

In response, desperation clung to her every word. Burnham was hungry for still more examples, more data, with which to apply to her own heart and discern its aches. 

Stamets looked down into the swirling drinks mixed in his cup. They joined and separated at will, cocktailing and pickling one another so as to never produce the same sip twice. 

“I’m loud and abrasive and petty and Hugh… is the culmination of everything a society could want.” Stamets didn’t have the words to explain that, though by chance, Hugh’s existence might as well be by design. His charity, goodness, and sense of morality were what was needed in this new age. It seemed at once too great a thing to claim, and too meager a compliment for the man he loved. “He sees the good in everyone. And for some reason, he looked long and hard at me.” Stamets briefly brightened--in fact, he seemed to positively glow--at that, a single fact shared along with his own heaped perceptions. But as quickly as it sparked, that light was snuffed out, and Stamets raved on, “But now I’m _hiding_ and if he can’t _see me_ \--and oh, _God,_ what is in this shitty punch?”

He ended there, face contorted and a little weepy, besides. It was unseemly.

“Lieutenant, if I may.”

Her unsettlingly gentle voice was joined by a steady hand--hadn’t Stamets had those, once upon a time?--that came to pinch the drink from him. Burnham downed the entirety of its contents, an act that was, to Stamets’ willful understanding, for the drink’s safekeeping. 

Rather, that bubbling, sharp indulgence was what she needed, Burnham knew, if she really and truly meant to advise a superior officer in matters so far removed from her wheelhouse. 

Logic, as applied to emotion. She hoped there might be something to it.

She stood, and addressed a slumped and sorry-looking Stamets with more authority than she knew was granted to her by Starfleet--which was to say, _any._

“You are feeling frightened and guilty,” she said, and as if compelled by her decision to address him and volume she used to do so alone, Stamets gave a single, slow nod of his head. “If you tell Dr. Culber of your condition, he may join you in one, but relieve you of the other.” 

“And,” she said, the warmth of the alcohol finally hitting her stomach and spreading like wildfire cloud there, touching to life every sleeping cell before extinguishing it in quick succession. The sensation made her feel unrestrained and weightless. “It is the right thing to do.” 

An objection died on Stamets’ lips. He wet them with an idle swipe of his tongue, and though there was still his selections of brandy and wine, the compulsion was gone. The aesthetic remained, however, as the alcohol was finely bottled and handsomely displayed. 

Taking Stamets’ silence for the unprecedented victory it was, Burnham went that much further, saying, “Computer. Play a Kasseelian opera.” 

The music built itself into a soft fury: first, the pounding of distant ocean waves, dark and worrisome, blasting against every inch of earth laid bare to their power. And then the crystalian sounds of those alien voices so full of light accustoming themselves to humanity’s most beautiful renderings emerged as if freed from the assault. Each delicate voice pierced the cacophony of sound until each folded into the other, smoothed, and within just a few seconds, the music spread out like a valley, inviting its listeners to sink and rise with the terrain. 

Stamets swallowed hard; he’d known the music was beautiful solely on the basis that Culber said so. This was his first instance of feeling the music’s weight on his heart, and finding profound beauty in the pain. It stuck in his chest, a great, heaving sore that wrenched with each breath Stamets took to calm himself. He looked to Burnham, who had positioned herself at the door to his quarters, ready to depart. 

He wanted to beg her to stay, to mediate--if not a conflict between himself and Culber, then certainly the one between his most heartfelt beliefs and the reasons he had, suddenly, for aligning himself in strict opposition.

She refused.

“You should be direct,” Burnham told him, the order befitting that of a First Officer, former or not. She softened, adding, “But dance with him, first. You’re very good at leading.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, regarding what transpired in 1x10. 
> 
> [Spoilers]
> 
> I am not here for more dead LGBT characters. Word on the street is this isn't going to stick by a long shot, but for half a season at least, we'll bury our gays. I’m fucking tired of reading around it as a viewer, or bothering with fix-it stories. It feels like such a waste of time. 
> 
> That said, it really fucked with the end of this fic. You can read to the end of chapter 3 and consider it done, but I'm trying to write a more uplifting, hopeful epilogue.

Dr. Culber, having come off a nine hour shift, was hungry, tired, and in desperate need of a shower. Some five months ago Stamets asked him what he did all day that put such a ripe stink in his pits, and a perpetual line in his brow. He’d said it while undressing Culber, and with a wry little smile, besides, suggesting that he didn’t much mind the smell.

Culber, fully aware of the effect all the dried sweat and blood--all colors of types--had on his physical and mental being, had snapped, _“There’s a war, Paul. I’m tending to those who are losing their side of it.”_

Because it was--at the time--that Starfleet vessels were venturing to various star systems, planets, and bases that had been met by Klingon attacks. The Discovery was not outfitted for the task, either in supplies or trained medical staff. The Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Culber, a few nurses and the odd Cadet who’d put a couple semesters in at the Academy were more than enough for an exploratory vessel, but hardly equipped to treat the scores of people brutalized by the war effort. 

As a sum--as Culber caught himself thinking of the wounded--they were endless. That seemed like a physics problem, but Paul didn't seem to have anything resembling an explanation. 

It was an effort the Discovery eventually strayed from, when the spore drive became too pressing a project, and ultimately a means of offense. At least, that was the reason Culber gleaned from Stamets; Lorca never did address the medical team towards that end, save to thank them for their service and authorize an extra two weeks of leave once the war was won.

(Culber was glad to be relieved of all the extra duty, and indeed, the heartache. Stamets had been less impressed, focusing not on what had departed Culber’s orbit, but what had supposedly been gained. “So, what, pencil that in for some indiscriminate future? What does one wear to visit a hollow promise? Take a sweater, I bet it’s drafty.”)

To return to his quarters now, feeling very much like he had all those months ago, where his work entailed a never-ending display of depravity and cruel disregard, unsettled him. He felt as though he bore the weight of everything he only heard tell of, though he never got so close as to sink his hands into it. Each flickering life gasped its last breath against the back of his neck, even for being entire star systems away.

With the immediacy these horrifying attacks had in reaching the whole of Starfleet, the galaxy never felt so small.  
Culber tried not to bring it into the space he shared with Stamets--that was their _home,_ for the time being. It was nothing like their place in San Francisco, chosen for its proximity to the main Starfleet base and campus, though it was far enough away from dorm living as humanly possible. They had a beautiful little piece of property, nestled in the damp woods and nearly lost from view for the ancient trees that surrounded it. Stamets had a greenhouse for his specimens, but more often than not Culber would watch his partner’s curiosities take him down winding wooded paths and clear out of sight.

 _Just to think,_ Stamets explained of his sojourns. It wasn’t as if he expected to find previously undiscovered species on his walks--though he hoped for as much, and _desperately_ so. 

Of all his untidy lies, Culber missed the ones he stuffed full of the earnest hope and giddiness Stamets deemed too unseemly for human consumption.

With their home as distant as a memory, Culber resorted to stowing away in the small makeshift office amidst the sprawling, stark-white and chrome of Med Bay. It wasn’t as vast as the woods, or as calming, but in terms of solitude, it served its purpose. 

The room was blue-grey in color, a place to step away from prying eyes and steal a few minutes’ sleep during shifts that stretched longer than the artificial day passing over the ship every 24 hours. 

When he wasn’t sleeping--as he hadn’t been, for some time--he would access Starfleet’s databases and simply watch or read reports from its many outposts, because if he could no longer put his medical knowledge and steady hands to work, the least he could do was bear witness to the day’s horrors. He’d count the ways in which he was hopeless, and helpless to stop even a fraction of what he saw. 

If Culber thought returning to his quarters would shut those fears out, he was gravely mistaken. 

The archangel of the war itself, Michael Burnham, was in his room. She was stood straight-backed and sure-eyed amid the swelling sounds of a Kasseelian opera.

Culber took in the wider scene: his partner, his clothing askew, and looking sorrier than Culber liked to see him was sat on the couch. The recently emptied phosphorescent drink cup in Burnham’s hand--a token from the party Culber surely would not have placed her at, otherwise--seemed more attuned to Stamets’ state. 

She gave him a brief nod and departing, passing him through the door as though they were in no place more spectacular than a public hallway, as if she wasn’t feet from his bed, and the man he took there. 

Culber watched her go, then turned to address Stamets.

“I have questions.” 

“Keep them,” Stamets said, and heaved himself up from the couch. That was as far as he got, speaking and otherwise. He stood, suddenly dumbfounded at the prospect of being met by the man he shared his life--much less these rooms--with, and again putting himself in a position to actively deceive Culber or not.

Culber saw this. 

There had once been a running joke among Culber’s friends and Stamets’ acquaintances that, for the two of them to be dating, Culber must not know Stamets all that well. Culber could have worn out the cool, unflinching smile that graced his features when the comment was made. To an untrained eye, Stamets wore the worst of himself--amplified, even--on his bare face for all to see. 

Scathing reads of Stamets as arrogant, single-minded in his pursuits, and the nurturer of a spiny intellect grown like a forest of barbed thistles weren’t mistaken. Stamets was all of those things and then some. But Culber saw what they were partnered with: honesty, open-hearted passion, and a wilful humbleness before the vastness of all he did not know. 

And just as he was in awe of the inner-workings of the universe he was only beginning to truly understand, he held Hugh Culber in much the same regard. 

Culber knew this, knew he was beloved and respected by his partner. Thus, the stalled, uneasy indecisiveness coloring his deceit wasn’t fooling anyone, least of all Culber. 

“I wish you were having an affair,” Culber said, the cool candor in his words doing nothing to soothe Stamets’ self-inflicted wounds. It wasn’t a cruel turn; rather, Culber thought Stamets would appreciate a return to form. 

“I think that would be more palatable than whatever explanation you’re about to give me.”

The softness that overtook Stamets’ features made Culber ache. 

“If it’ll make you happy, dear doctor, I’m having an affair.”

“Thanks, honey. Thrilled to hear it.”

Culber shrugged out of his uniform jacket and ventured into the bathroom, where he washed his face and pressed a cool cloth over the back of his neck. He did this slowly because, all the while, Stamets was following just steps behind, and looking puzzled for his own demure behavior. 

“I just got relationship advice from a Vulcan transplant,” he said, something like a throwing a match atop a dying fire. He caught Culber’s attention at once. 

“If you don’t sleep with me for seven years…” 

“I don’t have that kind of restraint,” Stamets said, smiling coyly. “Mentally or physically. You know that. Or, you would. If you’d… you know.” 

He didn’t _have_ to make the crude gesture with his right index finger and his fisted left hand, though Culber appreciated the showmanship. 

His amusement could not buoy his spirit, however, sunken as it was in the pit of his stomach.

“You’ve been through the ringer, Paul. Since that first jump I haven’t wanted to… cause you to overexert yourself.”

Stamets bent and scooped the discarded uniform top. “Well let’s just zip you back up into this, then, and maybe find you a nice, billowy… cloak.”

“You don’t want a repeat of that time after that conference on Alpha Centari Bb, when you passed out on top of me, do you?” 

“If I’m going to pass out anywhere…” 

“That’s not funny. Your scans tell me nothing’s so egregiously wrong, but they have to be missing something. You look awful.” 

“Thanks.”

Culber wanted-- _so, so much_ \--to fall into their soft, joking rhythms again. And here they were, laid out so neatly before him, like a trail of breadcrumbs he could follow back home. 

But loving Stamets meant knowing nothing he ever did followed a straight line, and Culber did not have the innate sense of direction that steered his partner. He knew of the two of them, he’d surely be lost along the way. 

So he broke eye contact, and stranded them both. 

“I can’t imagine Michael would give you unsolicited advice.”

Silence ballooned in the room as Culber awaited the response he knew would never come.

He stripped down completely and took a sonic shower; he didn’t feel like anything more substantive. Culber did not want to soak his own body or touch his own skin, worried he’d arrive at himself as alone as he felt. 

When he’d finished and dressed in pajama bottoms, Stamets was still waiting for him in the center of their room. If possible, he looked humbled. 

“The wine’s for you. And the brandy. It’s yours. And I...” Stamets closed his eyes to some great, immeasurable hurt, before willing them open, bright and blue, and pressing on. 

“I hope you'll partake. Of any of us gathered here today.” He chanced a smile, and unlike most of his bad ideas, this one didn’t take. “Suspend your doctorly standards for the night and throw caution to the wind.” 

“As opposed to out an airlock,” Culber muttered, because that's what life with Stamets felt like some days. Culber could only get so close before Stamets decided enough was enough--enough love, happiness, insecurity, heartache, passion--and he'd close the conversation swift as death. Culber would be shut out, pitched into darkest dark. 

_I don’t want to look at you right now._

Those words--when Stamets first spoke them, maybe a month into their relationship--should have been world-ending. The look on Stamets’ face certainly suggested he thought as much, after realizing what a combination of sleep-deprivation, unfunded research proposals, and general frustration with Starfleet administration had caused his brain to pluck from the back of his mind and force like a geyser out of his mouth.

Culber had only pressed a gentle kiss to Stamets’ cheek, and agreed.

_I don’t want to look at you, either. How about next Tuesday? We’ll get dinner._

_Somewhere nice_ was implied. Stamets dressed for the occasion, sweaty palms streaking his slacks for the five minutes he sat in a restaurant thinking Culber wouldn’t show, that this was the humiliating send-off he deserved, and he’d been a fool to hope for near enough to love to name at all. 

But Culber had showed, his wits about him and hanging off the rising corner of his mouth in the form of a relieved smile. It was Stamets, though, who leapt to attention and quickly returned the kiss they’d parted with. 

It was a promise, the first of its kind, though certainly not the last. Stamets traded in them more than he’d like over the years, but in a universe of uncertainties, he’d come to implicitly trust Culber’s word. That much, he could cling to. 

That much, he could trust.

So it hurt that much more to hear Culber say, “I want to,” in a tone that belied his inevitable refusal. 

Hugh could do that. He could look at a thing and know it wasn’t good for him, and he could abstain. To that extent, he’d never amassed the kinds of regrets Stamets had--sleeping with an ex, working himself ragged, going days without sleep. And though Stamets had all but dug a ditch and laid the bar in it, Culber could claim another moral victory: he hadn’t altered his DNA to play test dummy within an already radically unstable procedure. 

Unless he included loving Stamets, doing something stupid everyday since they’d met was not his bag.

In recent weeks, however, he’d come to question that conclusion. Which really won out--Stamets’ brand of bursts of insanity or Culber’s apparent long-term psychosis? 

“I miss you,” Stamets said quietly. “I don’t know why that is. You’re right here.”

Culber swallowed the lump in his throat. 

“Going on a decade, now.” 

“I’m arrogant. Burnham told me.”

“I’ve been saying that for years.” There wasn’t any bite in Culber’s words, but he wasn’t teasing, either. “So you know the problem. Can you apply the solution? Just--talk to me. Tell me whatever it is you’re not telling me--”

“Everything’s--”

“Fine,” Culber supplied. “So you’ve said.”

He tugged on a white undershirt and attempted to reach their bed by stepping around Stamets. 

“Hugh.”

Stamets’ hand caught around Culber’s wrist. 

“No,” Culber said, his stare locking with Stamets’ and daring him to blink. “You don’t get to be disappointed in me.”

“You know I’m not. That’s--just not possible.” 

Stamets’ grip loosened, but only enough to slide and reach Culber’s hand, where he tangled his fingers with his partner’s. He held fast until Culber squeezed back. 

“Dance with me,” Stamets said, prompting Culber to acknowledge that the music had heaved back from its lull, itself a moment of grief in the story. It was a feature of most Kasseelian operas that silence befall a sorrowful scene, and in a live performance Culber thought the absence of song was incredibly profound. It afforded the experience a moment wherein the audience itself was heard--the stifled sobs, or shallow breathing, of hundreds of people caught in the same emotional exploit. 

Heartbreak was all things. Felt, forgotten, heard.

Absently, Culber objected: “You can’t dance to this.”

“You can’t hum it, either.” Stamets ran his thumb in slow circles against Culber’s wrist. He begged again, “Dance with me. Please?” 

Stamets was gentle when it mattered. 

Culber gave up, gave in. He afforded himself to his partner, and was privately surprised when Stamets moved to let Culber lead.

 _Cunning,_ Culber might have thought, except Stamets didn’t have the good sense of self-preservation to make himself the wounded party. Even when he had genuine cause--Lorca bastardizing the purpose of his research, for one--Stamets resolved to take the grievance on its face rather than turn it inward as an attack on his person.

No; he simply wanted Culber’s guidance, here if he could not seek it on other matters. 

“I miss this,” Stamets murmured, and Culver watched him bite his lip to stave off something more. 

_And I’m so scared of the times I don’t remember…_

The fear bearing down on whatever it was he hadn't said bleed clear across his face. It was Culber’s first, best impulse to diagnose and treat the wound. 

“Paul…” He stopped the gentle footwork. “This isn’t you, drunk. This isn’t even you, high. You only get morbid when you’re really, truly scared. I need you to talk to me. Please.”

Stamets tucked into Culber, burying his face in the man’s chest.

“After this dance. Okay?” 

Culber wanted to allowed himself that much, and it would have been so easy to carry on with his hands on Stamets’ waist, standing flush and swaying so slowly as to feel the ship move. The act’s bare intensity found him unexpectedly, and there was comfort to be found in the mundane: the familiar--if a touch tired--dance moves, the easy tenderness. 

The smell.

Sweet scents mingled at Stamets’ throat and perfumed his hair. He was forever spiced with that deep, wet odor that clung to Stamets for as long as Culber had known him. It was distinctly of earth, no matter from what plant’s surface he gathered and tended his specimens. 

The damp, honeyed, decaying earth had followed him from their San Francisco home into the deepest reaches of space. 

The longer Culber clung to it, the better he knew: every step felt like a bribe, the whole thing a heist Stamets had orchestrated. He’d steal Culber’s heart and after that, toy with his sanity. 

“Computer--”

His tone alone silenced the music.

He stepped back--a quick move that left Stamets stumbling one step forward, but getting nowhere.

“Enough, Paul.”

They stood facing one another in a way Culber believed they scarcely had. Even their first meeting was sidelong, and from there on out they approached life’s trials as a partnership, and never in opposition. 

An incredible sadness wrapped itself around Culber’s spine like it meant to snap him in half. He supposed that facet of their lives was well and truly over. 

They’d had a good run. 

He spoke, quietly at first and then with increasing resolve. 

“I have to already know the worst of it,” he said. A genuine plea. 

“Injecting yourself--manipulating your own DNA--that, no matter how pure your intentions, was criminal. You know it. Tilly and Burnham know it. Anyone you work with has figured it out, even if you sent them out of the room. It was in your own research, Paul--absent a tardigrade, you needed a viable host, conscious of its choice. It was the only way.” Culber bit into his own involvement, there. Shame streaked down his cheeks, ruby red juice from over-ripe fruit. 

“And the tardigrade is gone, but here you are, having done everything you said you’d do. What am I missing? Dare I ask?”  
Stamets looked at the floor. “You didn’t see--”

 _“No one saw, Paul._ You made sure of that. But you have implants in your arms. You go in that chamber. You make it work.” He could have laughed at the sheer audacity of it all. “I don’t understand your reasoning, here. You’re not worried Tilly or Burnham will tell? Or don’t you care about what would happen to them if they didn’t? Lorca--now, there’s no problem. The only thing you’ve ever been on the same side of is this fucking ship--until _this._ And you’re miserable, and that is no coincidence.” 

Stamets had no arguments there. 

“Even for all you’ve done and seen, you _know_ that something is wrong.” Culber gave back the steps he took away from Stamets. He held his partner’s hands again, but there was no forthcoming dance. “You think it’s got you backed into a corner but, Paul, I'm right there with you. I will _always_ be in your corner.”

Something cracked across Stamets’ face, causing his eyes to pinch shut and his mouth to open. Culber, taken aback, very nearly meant to search the room for the unseen projectile when he understood the reality of what he was seeing eclipsed the fact. 

Paul Stamets had begun to cry. 

Culber had never seen such a display from Stamets, had never known it _possible._ Stamets was too uncompromising, too sanctimonious for indulging in unbridled fits of despair. By his own estimate, feelings were precisely that--an indulgence, and Culber wrung enough out of him as it was, earning every tender smile and tittering annoyance. There surely could not still be _more,_ or _so much of it._

Beyond an ardent distaste, Stamets simply was not inclined that way. When three inches of steel pierced his sides, he’d laughed in a fit of hysterics. The death of his oldest friend and the weaponization of his life’s work garnered silence and cutting--touching on the mutinous--commentary, but not so much as a sniffle. 

There went a brief moment where Culber did not know what he was witnessing. When it registered--clicking into place like fractured bone under an osteogenic stimulator--a not-so-brief moment passed during which Culber wondered if this was not more of Stamets’ lies, or, perhaps in a return to form, his raving. 

Stamets was unwell. Whether Culber knew that by demonstration or admission, it was so. 

When those moments of doubt and confusion passed--and they were sure to, because doubt and confusion were shallow pools between himself and Stamets--Culber sank into an ocean of heartache. He gripped Stamets, as Stamets did to him, each either conceiving of the other as their sole means of survival, or a partner with which to witness their end. 

Stamets’ hands drifted up from their slackened place at his sides so he could bury his face under them, searching, as if he knew by touch what was left of him for Culber to love. And if he could just find that part of himself again, he could offer it up as tribute. 

But the search came up empty.

Culber brought his own hands to cover Stamets’ so that he braced the man, holding him through sobs that rocked his shoulders, but were absent any noise or wetness. It was as though his body did not know the mechanisms of this action, and could not gauge between a fatal error and anything less, and chose to delay the key features of crying, so as not to give all of itself away.  
When the pressure became too much, tears made their appearance, pouring out faster than Stamets was at collecting them in the palms of his hands or the sleeves of his uniform. Hugh drew him in, offering the soft t-shirt pulled across his chest. It was a gracious recipient.  
Culber moved them both to sit at the foot of the bed, where he caught a glimpse of red-ringed, glassy eyes, and a brow furrowed to the point of fracture. 

Sufficient to say, Stamets didn't understand a response like this from himself, either. 

Stamets struggled to speak, choking on the beginnings of a dozen apologies and explanations, but Culber hushed him, and counseled only for quiet and calm. He could have had his answers, could have wrung them out one by one from his partner until he was bone dry and empty, even, of the thought of further deceits. 

Culber’s greater, insurmountable impulse was to ease Stamets’ pain. The smooth, sleek augmentations set in the man’s forearms were evidence of that. Culber had hated doing it--he thought it could be misconstrued as his tacit endorsement--but he hated more the fact that Stamets was willing to crucify himself on the spore drive, over and over, at the first flicker of the ship’s lights. Safety was not of his concern; comfort, even less so. Culber would always make appeasements where he could. Sometimes that meant co-opting artificial nerve receptors generally used for victims of tremendous, limb-debilitating injury, and sometimes that meant sinking from the bed to the floor of his quarters, holding a broken man upbright as best he could. 

They remained there for some time, collapsed, barefoot, with Stamets’ exhausted, pent-up frustrations, fear, and heartache spilling out. Culber had never before felt so useless, doing as much as to only piece Stamets together, but not treat what ailed him. 

Culber imagined a poison was to blame--perhaps a noxious gas seeping out through the ship’s internal communication systems, overlain with with the Captain’s words as he rallied his would-be warrior crew. Or maybe it was subtler than that, dripping from the honeyed compliments Lorca saved only for having his way done. 

As Culber stroked Stamets’ hair and rubbed his back, he wondered if a bloodletting wasn’t quite the inconceivably nonsensical practice of yore. Perhaps it was time for a roaring comeback. 

Finally, when Stamets regulated his breathing and dried his eyes, he made a motion to speak. 

To this end, Culber did not tend to the words that dribbled out of Stamets. He’d let them stream out, if need-be.  
Stamets spoke about why he went as far as he did for the spore drive, as if that first, great leap into the unknown was a more pervasive act than its continued use. 

“For you,” he said, a quiet admission that still struck Culber at the base of his heart. “For Straal. If he were still here, he’d have done it. _Gladly.”_

 _Straal’s ship twisted itself inside out, killing hundreds,_ Culber thought, but did not say. Stamets knew those facts all too well. 

“For the Captain,” Stamets added grudgingly. Culber knew he was speaking to his duty as a Starfleet officer, that there was no love-lost between his partner and Lorca. 

“And.”

The breath he took was shallow, but the first of its kind free of quaking sobs. 

“It’s _incredible.”_

And.

 _“I want to see it all.”_

Unease was an ice pick thrust down through Culber’s ribs, pinning him to the floor. He shifted--just an inch--and steeled his whole self so as not to bleed out with his hurt and confusion.

“You’re not like Straal,” Culber said, and kept his voice gentle. He meant no offense. “You will only take the calculable risk. What is it you think will come of this? If you spend everything on the spore drive, what are you expecting to gain?” 

_A potential end ot the war,_ Stamets thought. _Or a reality too awful to contend without you._

The worst of it was, he could not be certain. 

“The possibilities, Hugh.” 

If it sounded like a plea, Culber did not think he was its intended recipient. Stamets hadn’t sought his approval for anything he’d done, and given his attempts at obfuscation, wasn’t after Culber’s forgiveness, either. 

“That you’d wager your life on anything less than a certitude, Paul, is the problem.” Culber wrapped his arms around Stamets and spoke into the soft slope of his shoulder. “You’re not that kind of scientist.”

Stamets swallowed, hard. 

“I think I am,” he said, the notion striking him with its sudden, crafty elegance. 

Being witness to his own deeds--past, present, future, and every variation of the three--seemed to bear that out. To wonder was what every species did, since the beginning of time. 

To be among those stars, then, and to _know--_

 _Men_ wondered. They wondered, and they suffered for it.

 _Gods_ knew.

And still, men suffered.

“If I were, would you still dance with me?”

-

There was a way it could have gone. 

-

Stamets saw some vision of it, perhaps in his mind’s eye, but perhaps from another lens. They danced again--at Stamets’ insistence--until his guilty, heavy heart gave way to the truth. They stood, barefoot in the middle of their quarters, with Culber holding him as Stamets spoke of the visions and thoughts he gained with every use of the spore drive. 

Stamets gave his explanation, and following at its heels were all his excuses. 

“If I’d said anything--”

“I would lie, Paul! To Starfleet, to the Captain, to anyone that asked! I’d lie to everyone, and gladly! I made an oath to Starfleet, but I made one to you, first.” Culber was at once relieved-- _this was it_ \--and terrified.

This was it. 

“If I lose you, I’m done. It’s already over. A sterling career would be a cold comfort.” 

And Stamets, feeling rightly shamed, drew back.

Culber, having had enough of that, kept him close.

“If I have to explain this to you, you’re really not the genius I thought you were.” 

“No, I understand I made a mistake. Several mistakes.” 

“A _litany,_ I think.” 

“Scads.”

He begged forgiveness for the position he put Hugh in, and of course Hugh answered every apology with clemency and the softest, sweetest kisses. 

But then there was the silent trek made to Med Bay, wherein Culber took Stamets to a private room and ran a myriad of tests, all greater and more invasive than his tricorder could muster. He found severe degradation of white matter, something that had likely been happening for some time before gaining the kind of traction it had so as to finally show itself. 

Like bruising, it sprawled and colored the scans. But like a cancer, it took shape. 

And like a mystery, it was untouchable.

It threaded itself throughout Stamets’ brain, engulfing the frontal cortex before fanning out, tucking into crevices, and finally stringing around his brain stem, a veritable noose. 

Culber sat on Stamets’ hospital bed, paralyzed with shock and silenced in his grief. 

Stamets, ashamed to be the cause of further upset, held Culber’s hand. 

Come morning, there was a message sent to Starfleet command, to beings well above Captain Lorca’s order. Hugh packed their things. There was no thinking that Paul would go alone to be examined, but even still, Hugh knew there would be no place for him aboard the Discovery when he took from Lorca the essential living element to the spore drive. 

When their plans were realized, there was a shouting match that--for once--Stamets didn’t engage in. 

Lorca played all his best lines, citing death and destruction, casualties among their forces and hordes of refugees in the Klingons’ wake. These sentiments were heaped like grievances, but Lorca’s tone carried them like threats. Culber kept calm, and even lobbed one of his own. 

The Captain’s medical evaluation--the original, unredacted report--would find its way to Lorca’s superiors, should anything delay their departure. 

It was a shrewd move, surprising even Lorca. Stamets, who had Culber’s hand in a vice grip, searched for a racing pulse, and found none but his own. 

He went like cargo at Culber’s direction, and for as much shame and heartbreak he felt for leaving his work behind, he was relieved. His life was his own again, a bleeding, beating life that existed independent of the cause they’d all be swept up in. 

That kind of autonomy was alien to him--had been, for some time. Its return was intoxicating, if short-lived.

“The lives we’ll lose…”

“There’s no reason you can’t continue your research,” Culber said, trying to appease a guilt he, in fact, shared. “Maybe find a way to simulate the network, like you’d planned to do.” 

“You retrieved my work?”

Stamets tried to sound pleased, though he knew that Culber knew his efforts only gained so much ground. Theoretical work was Stamets’ whole academic career on earth, earning him his mixed reputation as a genius/raving lunatic. But his greatest breakthroughs were made in space, checking the math against reality. 

“I asked Tilly to copy the protected files from Engineering.”

And while he did not have the opportunity to thank her before they departed, Stamets saw her and Michael Burnham in the shuttle bay, not bothering to even pretend to look busy. He offered a weak smile, which they returned in kind.

The last stars Stamets saw were from a shuttle’s singlet window. 

Culber’s reflection--his mouth fixed, eyes stalwart and sure--gleamed over all, and for Stamets, it rivaled that of the mycelial network in terms of great views. When, in all of creation, would he again see a man willing to sacrifice everything, and have his hand all the while, never wavering?

Stamets was unburdened from more than his secrets. Rightly or wrongly, Culber had heaved the responsibility of a Federation ship, its captain, and a galactic war off Stamets’ shoulders.

Culber said, as if for posterity, “You are my lover, my patient, and my responsibility.”

He didn’t say what it was he meant. 

_This isn’t your decision anymore._

-

There was a way it went. 

-

Culber could not bear to be lied to, so he posed no questions. The Ktarian Merlot and Saurian Brandy went untouched--Stamets, too, despite his best, most-intoxicated efforts.

Stamets did not ask for his dance, but sank into sleep.

Culber held him there, limbs and sheets covering all, but the effort drew heavy on habit. They drew apart during the night, and when Stamets awoke, the edge of the bed might as well have been the end of the universe. He got very, very close and peered over. 

Culber felt so far away from him and now, even for all the venues opening to him, Stamets did not see a way back into his lover’s arms.  
In the morning’s artificial sunlight, Stamets gauged what he was feeling as either a change of heart and a hangover. 

Tentatively, he started, “Hugh…”

Culber knew tentative. A tentative truth was Stamets’ sweetest version of prolonged deceit.

He replied, “You overslept.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yaaaay it's over. 
> 
> I've read spoilers/seen gif sets but haven't watched since episode 10. I'm just..............not here for all of that. Apologizes if it doesn't jive with where the show has gone.

Morning arrived, though it was already one of those days that Stamets was keenly aware of that’s point’s core deception.

It was never morning, not without a place on his idling earth before a burning sun. 

It wasn’t morning without taking his place next to Culber as they brushed their teeth and stole furtive glances at the mirror, enjoying the look of the two of them together. Nothing in his life felt more neat, more secure, than those early moments with Culber, where the circumstance dictated their meaning, even in some days it slipped Stamets’ mind for some other great mystery. 

_I’m brushing my teeth with this man._

_I must love him._

And if ever he questioned his capacity for that, there was the visual proof before his very eyes. 

Without Culber, Stamets began his morning in an unnavigable fog. 

It was nothing like the spliced sense of _being_ and _not_ he endured since becoming a part of the spore drive; this was far more familiar to him. 

His thoughts were vibrant but unorderly, and somewhere between his mind and his mouth, they were rendered unintelligible. The effect took him back to his early childhood, before tutors and nurses helped him establish the well-traveled paths to communication. Speech and nuance and tact may have arrived for others naturally, but Stamets found them akin to workarounds. He learned to reach out instead of punching upwards towards nothing, making do, until such a time as he met Culber, and suddenly his thoughts did not seem so unaccessible.

Suddenly, when this person listened, Stamets was heard. 

And instead of tact, Stamets found a well of kindness and empathy in this man who taught and lived both.

He appreciated Culber’s methods, made attempts to emulate his behavior, a cause through which he often fumbled and made himself a fool. Still, he’d be damned if the heartened look on Culber’s face wasn’t ample reward.

Silence didn’t suit either of them, yet that was the origin of Stamets’ day. 

He dressed, drank his morning tea, tended to his mushrooms, and availed himself to Engineering. He worked silently, and by example he relegated that distinction to his subordinates. Even Tilly managed to--mostly--comply. 

It was only Burnham who regarded him with curiosity enough to speak volumes.

And though she stared at him with unbridled scrutiny, Burnham could not discern what was happening on Stamets’ face. 

He was quiet, contemplative, yet his eyes were bright, his skin flushed and red. It passed in her mind that perhaps he was intimate with Dr. Culber in all the ways he missed, but she dismissed that notion quickly. He wouldn’t look so downtrodden, were that the case. 

In hushed tones, Burnham shared her curiosity with Tilly, who took one look at her superior officer and pressed her lips into a thin line. 

Her face, Burnham thought, went through much the same motions, settling on tight-lipped, gaze ensnared in an unrelenting focus on some task--any task--that she might place ahead of her hands, rather than her heart. She murmured to Burnham that she should respect the Lieutenant’s space.

“That’s _your_ advice?”

Burnham did not bother masking her disbelief. 

_Honesty,_ she reminded herself.

“He’s clearly… yes.” Tilly was a disciple of the school of spared responsibility, not honest confrontation.

She was kind in that way.

“Let him collect himself,” she said, her voice hushed but no less assured. 

Burnham watched, waited, and tried to maintain her cool even as every passing second took them all closer to that singular inevitability. 

She saw a man gripped tight by conflict--a moral question plagued him as they plagued all species inclined towards righteousness. But, knowing Stamets, Burnham figured him for being troubled by the practicalities. Not, does one _ever_ solve a moral quandary, but how does one put motions towards its end? Solved or not, _how is it finished?_

His was not the face of a man who had unloaded his conscience to his partner. Instead, Stamets wore his worry deep in his brow, and angled his brow towards his console. 

He did not--could not--look Burnham in the eye. 

Burnham understood the desire not to see or be seen by her Starfleet colleagues; there was a time not so long ago that she’d have rather been jettisoned into darkest space than walk the corridors without the polished insignia displayed over her heart. There was untold shame in being aggrieved for choices of her own making.

She saw that in Stamets, who was ashamed of himself, confused for his cowardice, and did not want to be forced--as a matter of pride--to contest what it was he did not doubt: that he’d surrendered precious time in being scared, and perhaps had already done irrevocable harm in continuing to lie to his partner. 

Being at the forefront of his discovery meant little when Stamets could not share how he’d gone from thrilled to terrified for the implications, and worse--unable to tell either his partner or his captain of its effects for fear that the only voice telling him he could stop did not have the authority to do so. 

It would _break_ Hugh. If not for first feeling useless, then being ordered to be so would surely cement the deed.

If Stamets told him of his visions and thoughts, the way they slipped into and out of his head and idled until he circled back into his senses and felt weary for the journey, only to be informed that would be his new normal, Hugh would not know what to do with his outrage. It would consume him. 

Stamets believed himself a lost cause, and that he’d long been destined to throw himself so forcefully at his work that one or the other would shatter upon impact. Why not, then, let Hugh’s good heart and idealism survive the crash? 

Even if that same heart broke just a little each day that Stamets denied him.

 _How morose,_ Stamets thought, a grimace testing his features. 

_Damn the consequences,_ he decided. 

_Try._

_And **maybe…**_

Over the course of the morning, something changed. Stamets settled. He appeared to have come to some conclusion and was content. 

Burnham saw that much, and then some. 

When Stamets departed his station for the forest again--the watering system was automated, but Stamets liked to survey his specimens all the same--Burnham was quick to follow.

The forest on Discovery still took her breath away. It was both of earth and entirely alien to her, as familiar forms doned themselves in glittering, breathing life. The pink glow permeating the space was not of earth, but undeniably natural. It was like stepping into a dream. Experiencing the forest did more to confirm her faith in Stamets’ genius more than any of his intricate coding, theoretical work, or even his one-of-a-kind navigation system. 

Stamets had grown a world of its own, and sent it into space.

Once, Tilly shared that sometimes Stamets programmed a storm to ravage the forest, or a few days’ drought, just so none of his specimens got too comfortable. She said this clearly annoyed, because she knew the number of spores they went through by an exact count, and did not appreciate what was little more than scientific rough housing. 

Burnham, on the other hand, found her immediate reaction to be one of delight.

She hoped to catch of glimpse of _that_ Stamets again: a man who believed so thoroughly in what he knew that he did not hesitate risking it all. 

She saw him--first, just a shoulder, than a shock of blonde hair to give the game away--walking along the railing nearest a selection of equisetum arvense that was nearly twice Stamets’ height. He palmed a hand on the fern, a gentle display of appreciation for its existence. 

Burnham stepped gently through the warm, wet earth to join him. 

“Last we were here, you were a more cautious man. You had armed yourself with a phaser.”

“Last we were here, you brought and let loose a being you’d aptly nicknamed _Ripper._ ” 

“You knew, same as me, where it was found on the Glenn.” Burnham felt a smirk tugging at her lips. “I think the phaser was to protect your mushrooms.” 

In all good faith, Stamets couldn’t deny Burnham’s assessment. He excused this, saying mildly, “Well, Ripper was getting a little fresh with the Macrocybe titans.” 

Stamets merely continued to look out over his forest, raised by his own hand into the spectacle before them. Species from all around the galaxy fostered this space, growing and thriving together. Stamets recalled with a strange blend of pride and nostalgia the levels of frustration he imbued in Federation officers. His specifications were vast and detailed, not the least of which was that his forest had to be grown naturally on location, he insisted, and not cultivated off-site only to be transported in at a later date. 

Stamets had, in effect, had a portion of the hull torn off the fleet’s newest starship, all for a little bit of natural sunlight. 

He remembered, too, bringing Culber to see the construction, not sure whether to expect awe or admonishment. What he got was the former informed by the latter, though Culber did not waste his breath chastising Stamets for being difficult. Instead, he made the rounds to those supervising the space--Starfleet scientists, engineers, and construction specialists alike--to share--on Stamets’ behalf, of course--his genuine thanks for their cooperation. 

The warmth of his sincerity was infectious, and soon Stamets found the world a more agreeable place.

 _Culber did that._

Stamets liked to pride himself on making his own way in the world--being his most stubborn self when it came to his thoughts and ideas--but he wasn’t so hard-headed as to fool himself into thinking he did not need help, or did not receive it in scores, from Culber. With his perfect smile and kind disposition, Culber went out of his way to make Stamets’ singular path that much clearer. He did all the smiling, the placating, the emotional heavy lifting that Stamets wavered under.

Stamets and Burnham stood in the quiet of the forest, the heady air licking at their throats and dotting their temples with beads of sweat. 

When Stamets spoke, it was not unprompted. Burnham had sought him out with exactly one thing on her mind--getting deeper into _his._

Only, she quickly did not like the destination.

Very slowly--and that alone was a departure from the Stamets she knew--the Lieutenant began to tell a more ready truth of what he knew, what he believed he could do, and why that alone should necessitate an attempt. 

“I think I’ve seen a place--a time?--when Hugh leaves me. Or never knew me. Or is gone, some other way. And,” Stamets gingerly touched a plant’s tendril, letting it rise and breathe. “The truly scary thing is, that isn’t even the worst of it.” 

He swallowed, hard.

“There is a great… depravity. A lack of institutions. An incredible cruelty--all of it, masquerading as societal norms. And it is so very close to us. Even now.”

Stamets’ throat was raw by the time the last gasps of his heart climbed its length and spilled out--finally--to be heard.

“It ruins all of us. And it takes Hugh.”

When the things he’d seen on the mycelial network wormed their way inside his head, appearing to him at some later date, if only for seconds at a time, appearing as fact only to confound him later, Stamets had been terrified. Then, he took notice. 

He’d once awoken next to this body, this _man_ he did not know. He’d been dumbfounded and intrigued and disturbed. He knew these things to--somehow--be some color of true. 

He hated that he was not certain of the context. There were worlds other than his own, and Stamets had seen them all, every permutation, a million flickering lights. Where he’d first been terrified of the visions, Stamets slowly came to approach them as any scientist should: with an open, calculable mind.

He’d felt--stepping back from many iterations--great relief that Culber was with him, itself only a possibility contingent on the fact that Culber had _gone._ In lieu of knowing what to do, Stamets held fast to only what he had: Culber, in the here and now, and the idea that if he could end this war, they’d have a future well after that.

Well beyond playing navigator, Stamets was using the spore drive to try and confer with time and space. He was, in effect, exploring at his options.

He said as much, concluding, “For as long as I can access the network, I will. I will see to Hugh’s survival.” 

_Because I’ve seen that it is very much at stake._

“And you will continue to lie to him until such a time that you can claim a victory?” Burnham asked. She managed to keep her voice level as calm waters, never mind the twisting fear roiling in her gut. “What about honesty, Lieutenant?”

“Whether or not Hugh still loves me by the end of this…” Stamets shook his head. “It can’t matter more than leaving him with a world with love still in it.”

Stamets looked at Burnham strangely.

“As you very well know.”

Burnham was unnerved, but no less intrigued. There was a name on her lips; Stamets had heard it before. She wanted to ask after her, wanted to know of worlds where her actions did not take this woman’s life.

Here, she did not risk knowing. It was just more torment, she reasoned, to guess at what wasn’t. 

Stamets knew that now. He’d learned it far too late. 

“There’s what’s coming, and there’s what is already here. Neither is more dangerous than the other. The longer we stay in this state of war, the more our minds and bodies acclimate. Our fear will rot the very core of the Federation. What we had--stability, peace, compromise--won’t feel like a memory, but a joke.” 

Stamets knew. There wasn’t a life for him in a world without Culber, but leaving Culber to a world without hope was as great an evil as he could imagine. 

“This has to end. We have to be able to see ourselves as better than this.”

They were the words of a slick proselytizer, but Stamets spoke with the cool cadence of a historian, someone who had seen it all. 

And he smiled, seeing the recognition of that fact bloom over Burnham’s open expression. She was desperate to be a convert. 

“I’ve seen… it can be done. I think I do it. I’ve done it.”

Burnham snapped back to her senses and gave a sharp shake of her head. Logic had come around again to shape her thoughts. 

“You’ve would have only seen the successful outcomes,” she stipulated. “Lieutenant Stamets--” she stopped herself, desperation on her tongue, tasting of rot and iron. In an effort to impress upon Stamets the gravity of his situation, she indulged in that desperation, and in turn, her humanity. “ _Paul._ You don’t exist in a future where you’ve failed.” 

“No,” Stamets said, a little dreamily. “But I’ve seen those, too. They’re not so bad, really.”

-

Burnham walked away from Stamets thinking only one thing: fatality. 

Then, _No._

And, _This can’t keep happening._

Burnham’s concern carried her with sure steps down corridors, solidifying into resolve the closer she came to her destination. The soft _whistle-whoosh-ping_ of the second, interior set of doors to Medical Bay announced her arrival. 

The area was as she best knew it: clean, unsullied place for research and practice. There was no trauma shattering the calm, no blood spilt over pristine floors or sent climbing the walls. 

She saw the CMO at the helm of a great screen displaying an Andorian nervous system, and speaking at length to his staff, gathered and gleaming in their pristine white uniforms. Dr. Culber was not among them, but off to one corner, addressing a patient in gentle tones. 

Seeing that his visitor was none other than Ash Tyler, Burnham very nearly turned on her heel to exit. His dark mop of hair and tired, hungry eyes were unmistakable, even at a distance. His great height, too, announced itself regardless of his attempts to mask it in a sloped shoulder or hunched back.

There were things-- _feelings_ \--she’d yet to discern when it came to the Security Specialist, none of which she felt took priority over her present business. 

Tyler, who spoke mutedly of dreams and phantom aches, quieted when he saw Burnham approach. He threw his gaze to the floor, but it was needless; Burnham’s eyes were on Culber, searching uselessly for evidence that Stamets had told him what he’d told her. Culber was wary, but dutifully carrying out his work. 

Nothing, Burnham concluded, had been shared.

Burnham imagined if Stamets had told his partner the extent to which he was changed and afraid, much less the places he was willing to venture--real, imagined, and finite--neither would be anywhere save for held in the other’s arms.

She demanded an audience without so much as a word; when she carried herself and squared her shoulders like a First Officer, others were bound to turn her way. They sensed that part of her, or at least answered to it, as though it was shouted out deep from within Burnham, and well without her notice. 

Culber turned to face her, and Tyler--never wanting to be seen--slunk away. 

Burnham wasted no time.

“Lieutenant Stamets is experiencing severe disorientation after use of the spore drive. He thinks perhaps he is stepping into and out of time streams--dimensions, maybe--or else accessing altered information by some other means. His greatest concern is that he cannot explain it.” Burnham narrowed her eyes, considered her mistake, and course corrected. “Incorrect. His greatest concern is your well-being. Stamets has seen things that perhaps call it into question.” 

Culber looked at her as if her words hovered about her head and hair, and if he focused just so, he could know them again. 

“Just like that…” he said, not challenging her explanation, just its presentation. 

“I betrayed the Federation,” Burnham said simply. “After that, what concern is a confidence?” 

Culber, quick as he’d accepted her conclusions on Stamets, now rejected them outright.

“That’s a poor lie, Specialist.” 

“That is not a title a mutineer can claim.”

_“Bullshit.”_

Culber led her from the open space of Med Bay, securing privacy and confidence in a small room stationed across from a wall of supplies. Besides a desk and a docked PADD, there were two chairs tucked into the space, but neither sat.

“You’ve proven yourself well beyond any of that,” Culber said. “Your place is here. People trust you. I trust you. _Paul_ trusts you.”

“He is wrong to do so,” Burnham said, then softened. “He wants very much not to feel he has to deceive you. The war effort does not afford him the room to be… considerate.”

“Don’t go spouting his lines,” Culber muttered, though not without kindness. “He wasn’t that even before the war.”

“And you loved him then, too.”

Culber closed his eyes. Burnham thought he wore his tiredness much neater than Tyler, who let it hang under his eyes and bleed into his limbs. He couldn’t stuff it down after further; it was as though there wasn’t room enough inside him for that.

Culber took all that exhausted him and swallowed it, holding it in his core. There, it bruised painfully against his heart, even for being concealed. He did not let it near his bright, inquisitive eyes or his gentle voice, and instead retained an air of elegance about himself. Burnham wondered if he had always done that, or if he had learned the trick since becoming a doctor.

She knew the futility of asking clarification. Humans--with all their humanity intact--often took offense to such inquiries. They confused curiosity for intent, and questioned both.

“What is this… information… exactly?”

“You know as much as I do, now,” Burnham answered honestly, adding that she was only made privy to the bulk of Stamets’ condition mere moments ago. “I asked, last night. But he mostly spoke of you.” 

“It’s absurd,” Culber said, gaze tipping itself off Burnham and seemingly hardening above her shoulder, though she suspected his thoughts were a great distance away. “He thinks so much of me… which isn’t hard, given how little he regards himself. Not his mind--never that--but the rest of him. His entire existence outside a lab, he thinks the universe could just take or leave it.” 

“Perhaps he thought that, once.” The swells of hope and confidence in Stamets’ words found her again, rising up from her belly, a too-sweet bile indicative only of sickness. “He does not think it, now.” 

Burnham bit her lip. Revealing Stamets’ wild intentions suddenly felt as dangerous as believing in them. Her fear blossomed from the quaint understanding that she wanted both.

She said, “He thinks he can end the war.” 

Culber listened--he heard her, certainly--and something shifted within him. But he did not break with any knee-jerk response; he didn’t scoff or grimace or bark a laugh. Nothing in him, it seemed, could be shocked by his partner’s actions, because nothing Stamets thought he knew or believed was possible registered as impossible. 

Instead, good sense and practicality slid like a crumbling cliff face into uncertain waters, crashing into something like hope. 

He heard Stamets’ conflict--in far more detail, now, than Stamets himself was willing to give--and finally understood his promise.

The possibilities were far greater than scientific discovery, recognition, or incremental advancement in Stamets’ field. There was a potential end to all this suffering, and not the distant, figurative end Culber had scarcely allowed himself to hope for, either. 

Burnham, as if thinking as loftily as Culber, quickly reemerged with the reasoning her Vulcan upbringing taught her, touched with all she now knew about the fragility of life.

“There’s likely deterioration of brain matter. Sensory disruption and rewiring. And what’s been--in effect--bruised by use of the drive may be repairing itself in ways partial to the tartigrate.” 

Culber nodded as she spoke; he suspected as much. 

_And yet…_

“I’m sorry,” Burnham said, her voice sharp and clear enough to snap Culber to attention. 

He looked at her as if to ask, _What, there’s more?_

Burnham had to give a name to her guilt. Culber was as far a thing from Starfleet Command, and she was nowhere near admitting to the actions of a mutineer, but every cell of her being demanded clarity. That much was owed to the injured party.

She took a breath to steady her nerves, except that it caught in her throat in a bout of surprise. The expression on Culber’s face was not one she was expecting: naked concern glossed over his eyes, parted his lips and threaded through his brow. And it was not just for Stamets. Culber’s eyes softened for Burnham herself. 

To Burnham, standing in that sympathetic light was an imposition; she felt like she was blotting out Culber’s sun. 

“We knew the tartigrate was suffering because we saw it,” she said. “I’ve been ignoring Lieutenant Stamets’ condition not because I could not see the toll it was taking… but because he did not say. And I excused that fact, forgetting that humans have evolved intentions, and those are harder to see.” She looked at the floor, hard, as if to admire it, but lifted her gaze to a more worthy subject. “But I knew, as we did not have a solution then, nor do we have one now.”

Culber opened his mouth to speak--perhaps to absolve her guilt, or join in it, or condemn her complacency. Burnham would never know. 

The sterile rooms of Med Bay disappeared under a torrential wave of crimson light. The white walls turned red while blue chairs and surrounding accoutrements were rendered in darkest black. For a moment--before reason touched the deed--it was terrifying. 

From the bridge, seemingly unfazed by the danger that literally washed over the entirety of his ship, Lorca calmly announced a Red Alert. 

The order paired with it was unspoken, but from the corner of her eye Burnham knew the doctors and nurses had returned to their stations, along with everyone on board. Culber, too, moved to attend to his duties. There were patients to secure in place, should the ship come under fire, or should Lorca order a Black Alert, and send the ship jumping through space on the mycelial network. 

He gripped Burnham’s arm slightly as he passed. 

He, like Burnham, had a guess as to which was the likelier outcome.

Burnham, absent any rank or order, decided her post was her own prerogative. 

She left for Engineering, not the Bridge. 

-

Seeing Stamets again, now sat at his desk in Engineering--a space largely unused since he became such an integral part of the navigation system itself--Burnham could not place exactly what she felt towards him. Pity, perhaps. Understanding, certainly.

He’d been ripped from the relatively safety and theoretical work of his lab space, and thrust instead into the very heart of Discovery. Burnham watched as his eyes drifted from his work and settled on the empty spore drive chamber--not hungrily, but merely expectant. He’d given up his choice long before he’d come to the decision he sat with, now. 

Burnham might have considered that fact longer than she did, but she did not have the inclination--nor the time--for subtleties. 

“Lieutenant,” she said, fixing her stare on his soft smile and half-lidded eyes. “You look unwell. Perhaps you should visit the Medical Bay--”

The red light that had gone soft since Red Alert was called suddenly flashed blue, then black, and Lorca’s voice permeated the ship and their thoughts. 

_“Black Alert. Prepare to jump, Lieutenant Stamets.”_

Stamets looked at Burnham.

“It’s like he can _hear you.”_

Stamets’ tone was curt, but he was still strangely at ease. Relaxed, even, despite the flashing lights, wailing siren, and barked orders--all at his Captain’s discretion. He sidestepped Burnham, who had put herself between Stamets and the chamber. 

He did this with a passing touch to her shoulder, a means to move but not dismiss her. Burnham likened it to the passing touch of Culber, just moments ago. 

With Stamets, the gesture was joined by a feather-soft smile, just the barest press of lips to hold back every answer in the universe. It was as if he’d always known a friend would intervene, though he had so few from which to assume such action.

And what a thing to guess, even for having seen a multitude of worldly visions.

As Stamets entered the chamber, reclined himself in the station provided by Med Bay, and spread his arms to reveal the cybernetic augments--courtesy of Culber’s bleeding heart and mind for compromise--he finally seemed to return to himself. He made an effort of squaring his shoulders and fisting his hands. Even for being the necessary conduit for the system’s operation, he was no idle cog. He looked through the chamber’s fortified glass and found Tilly. She loaded a container of spores and knew right where to look to meet his stare.

She waited for his say-so.

Every time.

Stamets did not believe for one second she was only asking as a formality, and would flip the switch if he was incapacitated, unwilling, or if command came from on high to do so anyway. 

“Lieutenant Stamets?”

“I’m… okay.”

The lack of clarity was intentional; she would fret and ask again. She would be sure. 

“Are you able…” Tilly stopped herself. “Are you ready to jump, Lieutenant Stamets?”

 _Oh,_ Stamets thought. _She will go far._

“Yes.”

The spores were released around him, buzzing and burning and thrilling his system. He breathed them in and they took to his sinus cavities, embedding there, digging into the tender space below his eyes. As they settled, Stamets felt the weight of them like a hand over his nose and mouth, smothering him and slowly crushing his skull. The feeling soon passed, with all the excitement going straight to his brain instead. He felt shades of high, drunk, dead and alive.

Stamets wasn’t sure he was really seeing what he saw, then, when the Engineering doors opened, and a column of white stepped through.

_Hugh._

He wanted to scream to be let out, to struggle free, to embrace Culber and kiss him so deeply as to touch something profound. 

What stopped him was knowing he’d just have to turn around and reenter the chamber, and deny Culber yet again.

After it was all over, Stamets decided, if the jump proved too much and he faded before finding what he sought, collapsing into his lover’s arms would have to do. 

Stamets knew it wouldn’t be long before he was in Culber’s arms, by necessity, if not agreement. 

He closed his eyes, very much liking the thought that he could fly the ship blind.

Even while the impulse to cry and scream and break apart still found him, it was blunted now by a world that operated independent of his thoughts. Discovery was no longer the great palace built to Stamets’ specifications, but it wasn’t the cell Burnham had once felt confined to, either. The network was vast and beautiful, the visions puncturing its paths terrible and skewed. 

His lover watched him grit his teeth and bare it all, heartbroken but no less resolute.

And yet, still, hurtling through space was its own kind of freedom.

With the jump successfully completed, Culber lent himself to Stamets’ efforts to exit the chamber. His steps were slow, his vision blurred and perceptions even more so. Every inch of him was still vibrating from the journey, locked though it was in his own mind. His sinuses burned so as to make his eyes water, but nothing escaped Stamets save for a breath of utter relief--not for his walking out of the chamber with his brains still encased in his skull, but that there was a hand on his back, and another cupping a tear-streaked cheek, and neither wavered.

Stamets didn’t know it--couldn’t feel it on his very face--but a great, disruptive smile had broken over his features.

Culber helped him into a chair. Stamets sank instead to the floor, legs splayed in a v-shape, hands laid emptied between them.

“Is there an end?”

Culber knew. Everything, or at least as much as was availed to him. More than nothing, never enough. Rather than the implications of all that, all Stamets could focus on was the terror in Culber’s voice, the fear that whatever his lover answered, the result would damn them.

“I’ve been looking.”

Culber was on his knees beside Stamets, and drew him in close. Stamets heard Culber’s racing heart well above his words.

“I don’t want you to do that again.” 

Stamets was silent. They both knew he was waiting for Culber to circle back from wishful thinking to the reality they’d found themselves in, though Stamets did not dare say as much, knowing Culber would be quick to point out that Stamets, apparently, had more than one to choose from, and that was precisely the problem.

Tilly announced that non-essential Engineering staff should leave the area. She then clarified that non-essential meant everyone but herself and Burnham.

On the floor, Culber detached from Stamets just long enough to look the man in the eye.

“The war before me,” Culber said. He did not blink even for the heartache that broke clear across his partner’s face. Culber smoothed a hand over Stamets’ cheek and his palm was warm, welcome. “And you before anything else. Please. If you never listen to me again, listen to that.”

“There’s no guarantee--” Stamets said, and his gaze found his empty hands, as if any problem of his was ever one he could grasp. “I can’t--”

“I know.” 

Culber took Stamets’ hands in his own, intertwining their fingers, filling his open palms with the silent promise of a reckoning. 

“I know enough,” Culber said softly. “What you feel you have to do. How it is you think you can do it. I’m just lacking for the why.”

He was tired--this was Stamets’ first thought. The war, Discovery’s place at its front lines, and Stamets’ part in its execution were all weighing on his conscience. They were entrenched in a conflict and so far removed from negotiations and peace talks that Culber could scarcely fathom the world they were in anymore--a tall order, given he wasn’t the one stepping in and out of a litany of options.

It was, at its core, a most human response. 

“You’re enough for me,” Stamets began slowly. “When we’re together, I don’t want for anything else. And if I thought we could be happy… at home, away from all this, I’d ask it of you.” He’d threatened it, once. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever meant it. 

He tried to explain--

“I take my social cues from you, you know.”

“Oh, god, do you?”

“You want this. I am… admittedly… more narrow in focus when it comes to my principles.” His shame surged into something more daring and resolute as that truth fed into another: “You are _right_ to want this.” 

“So why not just tell me?”

Stamets shrugged, and the gesture alone left his dizzy. Jumps through the spore drive still had not changed in that respect. 

“You’d want me to try. Even for being scared for me, you’d…” He shook his head. “And if I fail… that should never be on you.”

“But you’ve been planning to do it anyway.”

“And _if_ I fail, it will be on the merits of my own hubris.”

He meant it for a joke, an icebreaker, a laugh. That was where Culber drew the line: Stamets, taking his own self too lightly. He had crumpled to the floor not but moments ago, and Culber gave him a look so as to remind him of that fact. 

Sufficiently schooled, Stamets continued, “And you give me too much credit. I don’t have anything resembling a plan. I just have to keep doing this, going there. If I could access the network without chasing any coordinates, maybe I could focus…”

“You’re talking prolonged exposure.”

“Just--talking.”

Stamets didn’t dare look at Tilly, who might as well have written on her face the theoretical math she was already churning out on this matter.

Culber had no such problem. 

To Burnham and Tilly, who were stood as the door like battlements, he asked, “Can we have a moment, please?” 

He was sure they would not stray far.

Only when they were alone did Culber sink a little in the shoulders, and let his aching heart knead at his words.

“This isn't what you wanted. My compliance.” 

That was only partially the case. Doing this was good. It was righteous. Stamets knew if Culber could be convinced of it's worth, there was his answer.

But hesitation clung to doubt. He had his theories, but so had Straal. And his great experiment left his ship and his crewmates in twisted, ruined tendrils.

Stamets shifted where he sat, drawing in his long legs to make room enough for Culber to come that much closer, which he did, instinctively. 

“None of this feels so far away,” Stamets admitted. His gaze met Culber’s and dug in, seeking confirmation. _Listen, and know, please, don’t you know?_

“Something is here already,” he said, a whisper clawing at his throat. “Something dangerous.” 

Fear flashed bright in Culber’s eyes, and Stamets knew he was heard. But his hands, once touched so softly, were given to an iron grip, and Culber bore no reticence. 

“I'm not going _anywhere.”_

And, god help him, Stamets believed it all. 

All the promise of the mycelial network--where and when it could take them--paled in comparison to Culber’s stalwart belief that, whatever the mystery, Stamets could get so close as to knowing its truth. 

“I love you,” Stamets said, over-loud and awkward. Culber only smiled all the sweeter, and did not retreat. “I do. And I feel--tremendous, tremendous--love from you. And it’s been the greatest accomplishment of my life, having you to share it with. I’ll never do better.”

He raised Culber’s hands--both still knotted up with his own--to his lips, and kissed where they met and met and met, finger laced with finger. 

He looked to the spore drive, his creation, a lifetime of unending research, and routine failure, and cautious triumph. He saw Straal in the design-- _God,_ did the man ever love a gas cylinder dispersion unit--but in the execution, there was Culber. In everything that worked, in every curve that proved ingenious, every calculation that proved invaluable, in every straight edge and castaway spore, he saw Culber. 

He was calm counsel when reality torched theory, his confidence that Stamets would find a way, his abiding love when Stamets did not. 

There was danger well ahead of them, but destruction and suffering had them surrounding. Stamets knew if Culber could forgive his waffling, cowardice, and deceit, and instead join lockstep with Stamets in facing the risks, they could--potentially--achieve something great. And maybe Stamets would fail, and damn all of existence, and _still_ lose the one he loved.

Or maybe he could still act fast enough to keep him.

“I’ll never do better,” Stamets reaffirmed to Culber, of Culber. “But I might be able to come close.”

He was gifted a soft kiss and a promise.

He’d done more for less. 

“I believe you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading :)


End file.
